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They Live (UK - BD RB)

Chris Gould takes a look at the Blu-ray release of this John Carpenter favourite

Feature

They Live opens with unemployed drifter John Nada travelling an economically decimated United States looking for what little work he can find. Nada eventually finds himself in L.A., where he manages to get casual work on a construction site, and it is here that he befriends Frank (Keith David, who also starred in Carpenter's The Thing), who offers to show Nada to a place where he can get a hot meal and a shower.

Frank takes John to a camp for the homeless, where people are cramped together in makeshift shacks, struggling to survive on what little they have. As the evening draws in, Nada notices some strange goings on at the community church across the street. The following day he decides to investigate, and inside the church he discovers a secret meeting between some of the camp's inhabitants, a crude laboratory packed with boxes of sunglasses, and a rudimentary transmitter.

That night the camp is attacked by swarms of armed police, who disperse the residents, beating many of them to within an inch of their lives. Nada escapes the raid, and the following day returns to the church. Whilst inside he takes a pair of the sunglasses he had seen the previous day and, thinking nothing of it, puts them on before he steps outside. This is when John Nada’s world starts to fall apart. The glasses alter his vision in ways that allow him to see the world as it really it. Posters, magazines, signs, and even money all carry hidden, subliminal messages, and aliens are living amongst the people of Earth!

It seems that only John can see the aliens, who turn decidedly nasty after they discover that their cover has been blown. After a few cool one-liners, a messy incident with a shotgun and a kidnapping, Nada finds himself on the run with no one to turn to but Frank. After convincing Frank of the alien menace (in one of the best fight scenes ever), both he and Nada join up with the underground resistance to try and shut down the alien invasion once and for all.

Video

Oh my, where did it all go wrong? Optimum never sent us a copy of their recent release of Carpenter's Escape from New York to review, but I read plenty of forum posts condemning it (unfortunately after I'd already bought it). Rather than being a true high-definition release, the video was allegedly up-converted from a standard-definition master to 1080p, resulting in a final image that looked little better than the DVD through an up-converting DVD player. As I said, I never reviewed that disc, but by God if they haven't gone and done it again! They Live looks very much like another up-converted transfer. It lacks the definition of a true HD release, with fuzzy, poorly defined detail throughout. The print is in reasonably good shape, even if I did spot the odd white or black fleck, but the aspect ratio is all over the place. The film is supposed to be presented at around the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but due to some odd window-boxing of the image (black bars on the left and right), it's actually closer to 2.18:1 (and the ratio differs again during the opening credits). This is most annoying if you have a TV with 1:1 pixel mapping. I also spotted numerous instances of aliasing, fuelling my suspicions that this did not come from a progressive film source. Colour rendition is actually pretty decent, as are the strong black levels, but those are about the only positive things I have to say about this transfer.

However, perhaps the worst thing about this release is what appears to be a major cock-up in the video encoding. Now I know many of you will have read the term 1080p/24 on various DVD sites (including ours) to denote hi-def transfers at twenty-four frames per second. However, in actuality film material is almost always encoded on Blu-ray at 23.98fps and the 24fps you read about is simply rounded up for convenience (actually if you want to get really technical, it's 23.976fps). So far this has been true of every film sourced Blu-ray I have checked using my playback software—not so for They Live. According to the program I use, the film has been encoded at precisely 24fps. 'What's the problem?' I hear you ask. Well, if like me your your TV is 24Hz compatible and your Blu-ray player can output video at 24fps for a movie-like experience, you will see a regular 'stutter' in the image, almost like it's skipping a frame.

I have seen this before, when Samsung accidentally 'broke' an early version of their BD-P1400 firmware by telling the 24fps mode to output at 24fps, instead of 23.98. That produced exactly the same stuttering effect I saw on this release. In order to test a theory I unwrapped my copy of Escape from New York and checked it using my playback software. It too is encoded at exactly 24fps and produces a juddering effect when played back on my TV, although it's harder to spot because the film is so dark. Now I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about video encoding, but it seems awfully coincidental that the only two titles to stutter on my system are both encoded at 24fps. Now I'm grateful that Optimum are releasing Blu-ray Disc titles, especially given some of their recent efforts ( Total Recall, Terminator 2), but none of that can excuse the shoddiness of this release. Marketing a disc as high-definition when it comes from what looks like a standard-definition master is just plain wrong, and the encoding issues only compound the problem.

Audio

We get both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS-HD Mater Audio 5.1 tracks for this release. I'm not sure I really get the point of including Dolby 5.1 when DTS is the mandatory codec for Blu-ray and offers a higher bitrate than Dolby, but hey... As usual I was restricted to the Core element of the DTS track, but even that was reasonably impressive given the limitations of the source material. While fidelity is decidedly lacking, surround utilisation is actually pretty good, generating a significant amount of ambience. A lot of this is created by generous distribution of Carpenter's melancholy score, although there are also occasions where character's voices and various sound effects emanate from the surround speakers. Perhaps it's because I'm used to the old Dolby 2.0 soundtrack on the Momentum DVD, but I found the 5.1 effort reasonably immersive. Bass is a little anemic at times, but thankfully dialogue is always clear, although like the rest of the track it lacks the crystal clarity of newer releases. While The Live might not be the most sonically impressive Blu-ray Disc in existence, it does at least improve upon its DVD counterpart.

Extras

Without doubt, the outstanding supplemental feature is the commentary track from director Carpenter and star Roddy Piper. While the banter isn’t quite up to the standard of the Carpenter/Russell collaborations, both John and Roddy seem to be having a good time as they recount many stories about the production. Roddy sounds genuinely thankful to John for the opportunity to be part of the film, and Mr. Piper certainly makes for interesting commentator as he tells tales of his many scrapes both in and out of the ring.

A short featurette is also included that, in addition to showing some behind the scenes action, includes interviews with the cast and crew. Unfortunately the featurette is too short to be of any real interest beyond the first viewing. Some short video profiles of John Carpenter, Roddy Piper and Meg Foster are also included, along with the film's theatrical trailer.

Overall

It pains me to say this because They Live is one of my favourite Carpenter flicks, but you might as well save your money and buy the existing DVD release for a fraction of the price of this Blu-ray. Okay, so you won't get the 5.1 Master Audio soundtrack, but you will get all of the extras and the video will be virtually indistinguishable from what's on offer here. I was really looking forward to this release, so it's no lie when I say that I am genuinely disappointed. Presumably Optimum employ people with a greater technical understanding of Blu-ray technology than me, so I have to assume one of two things: either they were asleep and didn't notice the problems, or they thought they could get away with releasing sub-par disc. Either way I find it hard to recommend this title to anyone when the DVD is almost as good.

* Note: The above images are taken from the Blu-ray release and resized for the page. Full-resolution captures are available by clicking individual images, but due to .jpg compression they are not necessarily representative of the quality of the transfer.

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I didn't review them, so I can't comment. I've heard back from the authoring house that did these discs and they're saying that some are 23.976 and some are 24, but that both are correct. They say that many titles are encoded at 24fps, but I've only ever seen it on these Optimum discs. They think it's an issue with my display anyway, but this is the first time I've encountered this issue. I'll add a note to the review.

Just out of interest, does your projector always say 24Hz regardless of the disc? I ask, because a number of people I spoke to swear blind that the PS3 outputs at 23.976fps and that their displays indicate that...

I'm sorry for the mix-up... I was talking about the other screwed up John Carpenter film on blu-ray: Escape From New York, since you mentioned all discs of Optimum should have that 24fps problem and they both seem to have a fake HD-transfer. I didn't buy They Live yet, and judging from your review I am not going to...

I've got two more Optimum (Cliffhanger and Basic Instinct) on pre-order. Any (good) word out on those titles yet, or should I cancel?

Yes, my player (Playstation 3) sends a 24fps signal to my Optoma HD81 DLP projector. The projector indicates that it receives the signal at 24fps. The display reads 1080p/24.

Today I compared the video to my old R1 DVD. I must admit the blu-ray looks better projected on a large screen than the dvd does, but that's not saying much. If I had known the film would look like this I would not have bought it, but the two sites I read the reviews on both gave it rather good reviews (7/10 and 8/10). Hard to believe, isn't it?

Chris Gould wrote: After checking I can confirm that all of the recent Optimum check discs, save for Night of the Living Dead, are 24fps not 23.976. I've been asking around on some technical forums and apparently this is wrong and could well cause the stuttering I witnessed. I'll try and contact Optimum for comment.

I watched Escape From New York on Blu-ray last night, but didn't notice any stutter. Picture quality ain't good though. Some scenes look okay, but others are just a dark mess and judging from the opening credits it's defenitely an upconverted master.

This, Enter The Dragon and Gangs Of New York are the worst transfers I've seen on Blu-ray, because they look not like film at all... Shame.

After checking I can confirm that all of the recent Optimum check discs, save for Night of the Living Dead, are 24fps not 23.976. I've been asking around on some technical forums and apparently this is wrong and could well cause the stuttering I witnessed. I'll try and contact Optimum for comment.

I love the film but I will be sticking with my DVD. Glad I read your article first. I do not want to buy the film just for "slight improvement" in picture quality. My Pioneer multi-region up converter DVD player already does a great job of upscaling DVDs of films made in the 70's, 80's, 90's to near HD quality.

I think 'much' is pushing it. It's a little bit sharper, but it's hardly HD quality. I'm willing to be proved wrong though. If Optimum come back to me and say that this comes from an HD master I'll print their statement for all to see. The end result is still c**ppy though.

Yeah, but I think that has more to do with the fact that I did a quick resize in Photoshop and Optimum presumably used professional video products to do their up-conversion. I've changed the frames so they're exactly the same now, right down to the film artefact on the red bin to the left (black splodge). Even so, from those caps I say it's definitely an up-conversion.

I have emailed my press contact, but she's not back until the 8th of September. I don't know what they'll have to say about my negative comments, but if we stop getting review material you'll know why!

I guess it is my favorite: 1) BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA 1) THEY LIVE 3) THE THING 3) ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK 5) THE FOG 6) HALLOWEEN 7) STARMAN 8) ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13

Now I'm curious to check out IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, CHRISTINE, DARK STAR (I've had it forever but have yet to watch it) and PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Are they any good (excepting of course DARK STAR, which I know is supposed to be a classic)? I hated his CIGARETTE BURNS short for MoH, by the way.

This and Escape were on my 'To Order' list, but I guess I'll stick with Universal and Optimum's standard DVDs and the R1 two-disc MGM release of Escape instead. I have the R1 Universal release to watch when I want to watch the movie sans commentary and the R2 release for the commentary so I'll forgo the audio upgrade. Hopefully the practice of delivering an upconverted DVD transfer won't be picked up by anyone else. What a crock--I would have certainly felt cheated if I'd gone through with buying this disc.